Twitter’s brilliant. This General Election has been made extraordinarily fun by being able to share what’s going on with the old Hive Mind, getting news within seconds from people in the heart of the action and generally mucking about being as silly as possible. Yesterday’s cries of, “Activate the Queen!” and this morning’s fantastic gag from @armyofdave says it all:

“Vince, could you just check these Budget figures for me, please?”
“George, this is a picture of a pony.”

Then there’s the more serious stuff, like spreading the word about the hideous failure of justice in Paul Chamber’s case, and Guardian editors quickly responded, using Twitter to get in touch with and extract a blog post from the man himself.

The Political Blogosphere is, like it or not, divided up along factional lines, into party political ‘swarms’. It’s rare to jump from one ‘swarm’ to another, with only a tiny minority joining up these swarms together by linking to each other. The BNP ‘swarm’ is almost entirely isolated from the rest of the political blogosphere, and curiously there are much more connections between Liberal and Conservative blogs than Liberal and Labour blogs. Curious that, isn’t it?

So the best thing about Twitter? There’s no such factional boundaries. Even if you don’t follow people who disagree with you, someone you DO follow will echo something they’ve said and you begin to build a picture of wide spectrum of opinion. For me, as a blogger, being able to hear people’s reactions and keep up to date with current events means I’m constantly refreshed and full of new ideas of topics to write about – at least for now. It’s not just me, either. Steve Bell, the Guardian’s cartoonist, has obviously been paying attention too.

I do hope I’ve not driven people mad with my abuse of Twitter over the last 5 days. I’m sure things will be returning to normal soon. You can find my Twitter stream here at http://twitter.com/charlottegore, and if you fancied joining the 1,229 people that seem perfectly content to tolerate my crap then, well, I can’t actually stop you.

Finally, if you’re already following me and you actually like it (what’s WRONG WITH YOU?) then do feel free to vote for @charlottegore at the House of Twits. They’re trying to create a chart of political twitterers. It’s pure willy waggling, of course, but being squeezed between Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale has brought out my competitive streak. I throw myself at your mercy!